1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to device management apparatuses.
2. Description of the Related Art
A technique for establishing collaboration between a help desk system, which manages an event such as a trouble occurred in a device, and a device management apparatus, which manages the device, is conventionally known. An example of the technique is disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Application No. 2014-174838.
Conceivable examples of the above-described technique include a technique of causing information about a device managed by a help desk system to be displayed on the device via a device management apparatus managing the device.
To implement this technique, the following approach can be taken. The help desk system transmits an electronic mail (hereinafter, “email”) containing information about one of devices managed by the help desk system to an email server. The device management apparatus receives the email from the email server. If the information contained in the email is information about a device managed by the device management apparatus (hereinafter, “the managed device”), the device management apparatus causes the managed device to display the information. This approach requires that the email received by the device management apparatus from the email server should be deleted. This is because, if a same email should be received a plurality of times, the device management apparatus performs the above-described process the plurality of times, which is undesirable.
Accordingly, in a situation where there is a plurality of device management apparatuses managing different devices, if one of the device management apparatuses receives an email containing information about a device managed by another one of the device management apparatuses, the other one of the device management apparatuses cannot receive the email and therefore fails to cause the device to display the information about the device.